Heavy Metal Talks music blog

  Artist: Necrotted Origin: Baden-Württemberg, Germany Label: Reaper Entertainment Released: April 24, 2026 Genre: Death Metal / Blackened Death Metal Rating: 7/10 Listen/Buy: YouTube Music The algorithm did its job. Necrotted was completely unknown to me before this album showed up in my feed ,and that's exactly how underground metal should be discovered. Random, no expectations. The band from Baden-Württemberg are now on their sixth album, and We Are The Gods That Tear Ourselves Apart is a statement from a band that knows what it wants to be. Blackened death metal is right up my alley, and Necrotted deliver exactly that. The guitar riffs land. They're not there to impress ,they're there to hurt in the right way, and they do. The drums are a machine of double bass and blast beats that push the album forward with an energy that barely lets go. Brutal the way good death metal should be brutal ....not chaotic, but controlled aggression. The vocals are strong ...

  Artist: Zerre Origin: Würzburg, Germany Label: Dying Victims Productions Released: March 27, 2026 Genre: Thrash Metal / Crossover Rating: 8.4/10 Listen/Buy: Bandcamp This album smells like blood, sweat and rust. Zerre don't waste time playing "retro thrash" , they rip the head off tradition and use it as a snare drum. Rotting on a Golden Throne is 40 minutes of pure violence in riff form, and I love every second of it. The sound is so dense and dirty it feels like getting the speakers shoved straight into your face. The guitars cut like razor blades over a concrete wall, and the vocals? More of an attack than singing , Nico Ziska sounds like he's screaming his way through the world's last riot. Brutal, but controlled on a disturbingly precise level. Pigs Will Be Pigs comes in like a chainsaw attack, and Deception of the Weak is straight up amphetamine thrash. In the middle of it all they find room for Mental Vacation, which slows things down w...

  Artist: Vanir Origin: Denmark Label: Mighty Music Released: April 3, 2026 Genre: Melodic Death Metal Rating: 9/10 Listen/Buy: Bandcamp Eight albums in and Vanir from Denmark are still one of the best kept secrets in melodic death metal. Wyrd hits hard from the first second. Against the Storm opens the album with straight up melodic death metal, no intro, no buildup, just riffs. the keyboards comes in quite early on this record and I'm not usually a keyboard guy , but here it actually works. They add something without taking over, and after a minute or two you stop noticing and just go with it. The vocals are great. Raw and close, like the guy is right in front of you spitting you in the face. The guitar work is solid throughout ,lots of tremolo, double kick and blast beats doing the heavy lifting in the rhythm section. Production is tight, everything sounds exactly how it should. Never Surrender and Mod og Ære are the two tracks I kept coming back to. Both have ...

Artist: Teratoma Origin: Berlin, Germany Label: Me Saco Un Ojo Records Released: March 25, 2026 Genre: Old-School Death Metal Rating: 7.2/10 Listen/Buy: Bandcamp Never heard of Teratoma before this one landed on my radar. Teratoma are a death metal band from Berlin and this is their second album, out on Me Saco Un Ojo. And yeah , this hits. Right from when the title track kicks in after the short intro, there's a weight to it that grabs you. The rhythm section is tight, the riffs are good and they stick. Mid-paced, heavy, no bullshit. Exactly what you want from this kind of death metal. Chaotic Bewilderment is the standout for me. It's got a momentum that sets it apart, and then out of nowhere there's a guitar solo I genuinely didn't see coming. Small moment maybe, but that's the kind of thing that makes you pay attention. Circle of Perdition and Festering Realm hit hard too. The short atmospheric break on Interim is a nice breather before the album...

  Artist: The Holeum Origin: Murcia/Alicante, Spain Label: Lifeforce Records Released: March 20, 2026 Genre: Post-Metal / Death Doom Rating: 8.5/10 Listen/Buy: Bandcamp Never heard The Holeum before this,came in completely blind, no expectations, just a name that sounded like it belonged in a physics textbook. Turns out that's kind of the point , these Alicante five-piece named themselves after an astrophysical theory about dark matter and black holes. Ensis is their third album, and whatever they've been doing in the years since their last record, it was worth the wait. The first thing that hit me was the atmosphere. Not the riffs, not the vocals , just the mood. There's a doom weight to this record that settles over you almost immediately, the kind that's more about gravity than volume. The guitars are doing a lot of the heavy lifting , building that slow, suffocating blanket of dark sound that good doom lives and dies by. I'm a sucker for it, and ...

  Artist: Soulinpain Origin: Santiago, Chile Label: Independent Released: March 13, 2026 Genre: Death/Thrash Metal Rating: 6/10 Listen/Buy: Bandcamp Years deep in the underground and still no label. 200 copies on CD. Soulinpain don't give a shit about the industry and The Last Dance of Death sounds exactly like that. This hits raw and aggressive right out of the gate — no warm-up, no bullshit intro to ease you in. Chilean death/thrash the way it should be, mean and direct. Insertion grabs you by the throat early and doesn't let go, and Mental Intoxication is the kind of track that gets stuck in your head whether you want it to or not. Four minutes of pure forward momentum. The guitars do two things and do both well — heavy riffs that just bulldoze forward, and tighter technical runs that keep it from getting predictable. The drums back it up the right way, switching between blast beats and heavier mid-tempo grooves without losing the thread. Francisco Gallegos on...

Artist: Intoxicated Origin: Tampa, Florida, USA Label: Redefining Darkness Records Released: March 27, 2026 Genre: Death/Thrash Metal Rating: 6.5/10 Listen/Buy: Bandcamp Intoxicated is one of those bands that has stayed under the radar long enough to feel almost unfair. Florida veterans with roots going back to the 90s, and with The Dome they deliver their third full-length ,30 minutes of death/thrash that doesn't waste your time. The guitar work is the first thing that hits me. The riffs are good, dirty, and rooted in classic thrash tradition. It grinds and tears in that way that makes your neck move on its own. Not particularly original, but executed with conviction, and that counts for something. The vocals are a pleasant surprise. They hit well within the genre without becoming a cliché of themselves , aggressive enough to match the music, but with enough personality to stand out. That balance is rare, especially in the death\trash area. The production does a ...

Artist: Gluttony Origin: Sundsvall, Sweden Label: F.D.A. Records Released: March 13, 2026 Genre: Old-School Death Metal Rating: 8/10 Gluttony have been doing this since 2009, and Eulogy to Blasphemy is their fourth full-length. I'll be honest.I came in expecting another competent-but-forgettable OSDM record. What I got instead was an album that actually got under my skin. The thing that hits first, and keeps hitting, is the atmosphere. This record is genuinely dark in a way that feels earned rather than performed. There's a claustrophobic weight to it, like the songs are closing in on you rather than just blasting past. A lot of bands in this lane go for sheer speed and volume and call it a day. Gluttony are more patient than that. The tempos shift, the mood thickens, and by the midpoint of the album you're properly buried in it. Magnus Ödling's vocals are a big reason why. Mid-range growls are his bread and butter, but he's not monotonous about it. T...

  Artist: Aedelgard Origin: Russia / USA Label: Regolith Records Released: March 19, 2026 Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal Rating: 8/10 Aedelgard is an international atmospheric black metal project — Vitharr handles all the instrumentation and production from Krasnodar, Russia, while Hræfn, based in Arizona, takes care of lyrics and vocals. The Repentance is their second full-length, released through Regolith Records, and my first time hearing them. I came in blind, no context from the debut Natteglimt, just the album and 27 minutes of my evening. What hits you immediately is the atmosphere. Synths sit underneath everything here, not in an over-the-top symphonic way, but as a kind of cold fog beneath the guitars. It gives the whole record a bleak, spacious quality that works well for the style. This is atmospheric black metal that actually commits to the atmospheric part. The guitar work leans heavily on tremolo picking, which is exactly what you'd expect, but the ban...

 Sorry for the silence. It's been a while. There's always a reason when things go quiet around here, and this time was no different. Life has a habit of getting in the way, and somewhere along the line the urge to write took a back seat to the urge to just... listen. Sometimes that's how it goes. You put the headphones on, you let the music do its thing, and the last thing you want to do is open a text editor and start forming opinions. The listening never stopped — if anything it got more intense — but the writing dried up for a bit, and I've learned not to force it. So I took a break. No apologies for that. What I do want to do now is catch up, at least partially. Because March happened, and March was genuinely ridiculous. I don't know the exact number of full-lengths that dropped that month, but somewhere between 150 and 200 is a reasonable estimate — Metal Archives and Heavy Metal Best can back that up if you want to go down that rabbit hole. I didn't hea...